So here’s some more haiku about birds. Well one particular bird – Britains National bird – the Robin. I’ve written a few haiku about them but the split sequence inspired by Cheryl’s text was an inspiration. You may have to read it a few times to get the hang of it though.
There’s no mistaking it; the festive season is well and truly upon us. Christmas trees, laden with baubles and twinkling lights, can be seen popping up in windows all over the country and it won’t be long before we start coming home to find Christmas cards lying on the doormat.
Chances are that at least one of these messages from loved ones will have a robin gracing the front cover.
One of the strongest associations between robins and Christmas cards can be traced back to the days of the Victorian postie. For a time, Royal Mail postmen wore bright red uniforms which soon earned them the nickname ‘robins’. As the exchange of Christmas cards grew in popularity, depictions of robins holding cards in their beaks began to appear. A trend was born and, over a century later, robins are still one of the most favoured images on the market.
As well as adorning our mantelpieces, the robin is also responsible for the snatches of birdsong that can be heard in our parks and gardens at this time of year. Unlike most other songbirds who fall silent after the breeding season has come to an end, the robin continues to make himself heard. His song does change depending on the season; the winter song definitely has a frostier feel than the sweeter tune we hear in the spring. This may have something to do with the changing function of the song. In the spring months, the male robin has love on his mind. He is looking for a mate and, though he still needs to defend his territory against potential rivals, his song has a smoother quality. When winter strikes however, romance goes out of the window. It’s all about survival, which leaves no room for any sweet talk. Don’t be fooled by the charming melody though – if you were a robin he would try to take you down in a second.
Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife & Environmental Sounds – British Library
lights twinkle
in every house
a robin on the
mantle
a favourite carol
solstice bells
deep in the holly
a robin sings
A split sequence (Peter Jastermsky) about robins (with special thanks to Caroline Skanne editor of Blithe Spirit and founding editor and publisher of hedgerow), who loves robins as much as I do.
Winter can drag on a bit here and in shady places the blackthorn winter lingers, sometimes well into April. But often a couple of warm days in late February or early March and before you know it …
‘Haiku along with other poems deserve more than one reading. If possible, they should be read aloud. While they often spark immediate recognition and appreciation, they give up their full meanings more slowly. They are, in fact, the most compressed of all poems. I like to think that means they are charged with extra energy and vitality. Certainly, they engage the reader as a co-creator.’ – Peggy Willis Lyles (1939 – 2010).
But first some music (Nature by AShamaluevMusic) to set the mood. You don’t have to play it – it’s your choice. But I think it works …
My haiku have been variously described as ‘transcendental’ – ‘inspiring, interesting, and brilliantly written.’ Like ‘love letters to nature’ – ‘conjuring many layers of loveliness, with the lightness of gently falling leaves’. Such beautiful words to treasure. Thank you! (Josie Holford, Isabella Kramer, Jodie Hawthorne, and Rosalind Maud).
So gently shoosh the cat out of the chair and when you’re ready … But if you’d like to know a little more about me and how I became a haiku poet, assuming you haven’t read that part already, then here’s a link – across the meadow – which will take you back to the start of my haiku story.
Oh and if you haven’t already twigged most of my haiku are about birds – these first two (both tanka) though, written for my wife Jan, being the exception …
I’m fit and well now thank you. Mostly anyway, although other bits of me are beginning to wear out. Retired and living the dream. And I’m writing haiku …
So put the kettle on and make a brew – or pour your favourite tipple. Play some music and sit back and read my haiku. Aloud! It’s ok there’s no one listening. Well maybe the cat. And don’t forget the chocolate biscuits.
Oh and if you let me, I’ll read some of my own haiku for you. I’ll start if you like. Just press play …
Coming back from a late evening walk at the tail end of summer I paused by an old farm gate and gazed out over the rough grazing and willow scrub …
… and then they came – one for sorrow, two for joy … twenty, thirty, a hundred, two hundred – from all directions. I lost count …
dusk settling
over the marsh
magpie roost
And still they came but by then it was too dark to see!
So when you’re ready let’s flip the page and read some haiku …
So why did I start writing haiku – I wasn’t a poet and didn’t read poetry. Wait! Haven’t we been here before. I wasn’t a writer either – although I had tried my hand at a couple of creative non-fiction pieces for bird watching magazines. But then a period of enforced rest, after major surgery, got me thinking about life – as you do – it’s transience!
All I could really do was read (I’m not a TV or Netflix person). And think. I’m quite good at thinking. So back to reading Richard Jefferies and thinking about life. In my youth I had walked the same hills, downs, woods and meadows as he had – and sometimes in some quiet corner of a meadow or a wind blown hilltop I could (almost) feel his thoughts.
This then was when I happened upon Colin’s book – Something beyond the Stars (1993). A book of Found Haiku from the Notebooks of Richard Jefferies.
So to help pass the time, I started looking for ‘found’ haiku in some of Jefferies’ other works. This is beginning to feel like it’s turning into a monologue on Richard Jefferies. But I find his books a constant source of inspiration. Many of my haiku have started life in his writings and essays – a pairing of his prose with my haiku; his prose reimagined. So I make no apologies for yet more haiku intuited from his words …
For Richard Jefferies the freedom of a bird’s life was appealing, as was a bird’s ability to live in tune with its surroundings and take delight in the natural rhythms and beauties of the seasons.
[…] “Presently a small swift shadow passes across—it is that of a hawk flying low over the hill. He skirts it for some distance, and then shoots out into the air, comes back half-way, and hangs over the fallow below, where there is a small rick. His wings vibrate, striking the air downwards, and only slightly backwards, the tail depressed counteracting the inclination to glide forwards for awhile. In a few moments he slips, as it were, from his balance, but brings, himself up again in a few yards, turning a curve so as to still hover above the rick.” […]
Wild Life in a Southern County (1879)
Jefferies’ passion for birds shines through his text. His description of a Whitethroat below like no other and probably never equalled. …
[…] “Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond.”[…]
The Life of the Fields (1887)
But is there a haiku to be ‘found’ …
bursting through his song a whitethroat
But ‘finding’ haiku, fun and somewhat addictive as it is, isn’t like actually writing haiku – not really, is it.
They were awful years. Working in a 9-5 office job ripped the heart and soul out of me. As someone born of the outdoors – the claustrophobic spaces, the bright lights the noise and people, so many people – was unbearable! When I could, I would bunk off and go for long walks across the fields, or up on the hills and downs, with Richard Jefferies my guide and companion. And think thoughts.
“Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of winter, at least assures us that summer will certainly return.”
(Out of Doors in February – Richard Jefferies 1882)
up on the downs a skylark takes me higher
Sometimes, in late summer or early autumn, I’d stay up on the downs and watch the stars appear, one by one – mirrored by the cottage lights in the valley far below …
It was a strange feeling – like being between two worlds – a childlike feeling of wonder and awe at the infinity of the night sky, yet comforted and reassured by the human presence below. The curlew’s call a portal between the two.
lights twinkle in darkening skies a curlew’s cry
But in spring and early summer, still waking with the birds, even on a work day, I would walk across the fields to the river … listening to the birdsong. Neither night nor day, there was a tangible change in the air and an imperceptible, almost subliminal lightening of the sky.
The blackbird’s whistle is very human, like a human being playing the flute; an uncertain player, now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself. It is a song which strives to express the singer’s keen delight, the singer’s exquisite appreciation of the loveliness of the days; the golden glory of the meadow, the light, the luxurious shadows, the indolent clouds reclining on their azure couch. … Now and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time, the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air which comes so softly unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge, the water which runs slower, held awhile by rootlet, flag, and forget-me-not. He feels the beauty of the time and he must say it. His notes come like wild flowers, not sown in order. The sunshine opens and shuts the stops of his instrument
(From Jefferies’ essay ‘The Coming of Summer’)
sunny days tease a blackbird’s song
And on weekends I would roam the fields, woods and water-meadows, all the day long, as I did when a child.
‘Butterflies flutter over the mowing grass, hardly clearing the bennets. Many multi-coloured insects creep up the sorrel stems and take wing from the summit. Everything gives forth a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies’ wings, noiseless as it is, and the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense of motion and of music.’
(An extract from Jefferies’ essay, ‘Woodlands’, from ‘Nature Near London’)
a warm wind across the meadows the hum of bees
Now, many many years later, happily married (I met my darling wife through work so it can’t have been all bad) with grown up kids, my walks and introspection, have been, and continue to be, a rich source for my haiku.
Why don’t you join me some fine morning – or at least poke your head outdoors and listen, just for a moment, to the birds … waking up.
The swinging ‘60s. Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Birds! No not the mini-skirted ones hanging out, downtown, in parks and city streets, nor the collared dove, though I was seduced for a while. And a pretty girl can still turn my head today, much to my wife’s annoyance. Think Felise in the novel – ‘The Dewy Morn’ by Richard Jefferies.
The Dewy Morn – 1948
“Felise walked up out of the water on to the turf and sat down at the edge of the shadow of the trees. … She thought of nothing but the sun and wind, the flowers and the running stream. She listened to the wind in the trees and began herself to sing – singing of ‘the woven embroidery of the earth’ threaded into her very being …”
Pure beauty (of imagination). And nothing to do with sex! Well maybe it is. I don’t know but that’s all you’re going to get. Now back to birds.
I saw plenty of birds on the local allotments – the only bit of green anyways near a stones throw of our new home. It became my ‘local patch’. I ticked off most of the commoner birds – blackbird, song thrush, woodpigeon, dunnock blue and great tits, chaffinch, goldfinch, whitethroat – and yellowhammers. It was also on my way to school – well sort of. I was often late!
But there were distractions at school too. No not girls. Well maybe!
daydreaming waiting for the bell my piano tutor
I had a sort of crush on my music teacher – she was kind and beautiful. I imagined her a bit like Felise. She seemed to know how I pined for the woods and fields of my early childhood. Even today, on the rare occasions I hear the song of a yellowhammer, the memories come flooding back.
humming along to Beethoven’s fifth
Grass Meadows – Coate
[…] ‘There is sunshine in the song – and whose colour, like that of the wild flowers and the sky, has never faded from my memory. His [Yellowhammer] plumage gives a life and tint to the hedge, contrasting so brightly with the vegetation and with other birds. His song is but a few bars repeated, yet it has a pleasing and soothing effect in the drowsy warmth of summer.’ […]
Wild Life in a Southern County (1879)
There was a lake too, a short cycle ride away, where in the summer hols, I would go to watch birds. And think! At one end there was an old church idyllically located on it’s own Island with a little stone bridge over the moat …
still waters a fish jumps … through my reflection
Colin kindly commented – “This is, dare I say, ‘perfect’ (as perfect as these things ever are) where ‘reflection’ means two things at the same time – something on the water and meditation interrupted by the conceptual fish that often disrupts ordinary thinking in everyday life.”
And on days when midsummer clouds scudded across the sky, I would sit under some willows and read Richard Jefferies – a kindred spirit who seemed to think and feel the way I did.
coot skitter among lily pads summer rain
They say that schooldays are the best days of your life. I’m not so sure. But they were a hell of a lot better than the following years.
‘… long, long time ago, I can still remember …’ go the lyrics to American Pie (“The Day the Music Died”) by Don Mclean. I remember watching the news of the plane crash in 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper died. I used to sing along to Buddy Holly songs – well when I say sing that’s probably stretching it a bit. The Headmaster said I was tone deaf and banned me from the choir. You’ll just have to imagine my rendering of ‘Peggy Sue’!
My childhood home – 1950
But I digress, I remember because it also marked a huge change in my life as we had recently moved from the country to the suburbs of Bath. I hated change and couldn’t handle the move at all for years after … Even now, especially in spring, just like mole I get a hankering to revisit my old home. Long gone now, replaced by an ‘architect designed des res’ but still it pulls me.
waking up the sounds of the day waking up
I was at home playing in the woods and fields. Sometimes I’d be out all day; waking with the birds – sparrows, always sparrows chattering from under the eaves, and tree sparrows twittering from a nearby ash (and if I was lucky, a green woodpecker or cuckoo calling). And only coming in, reluctantly, as the owls began hooting, and the blackbird had sung his last song.
punctuating time a blackbird’s song
Going to bed had its own challenges. While the outdoors held no horrors even in the dark, my bedroom lit only by a single oil lamp, had lots of spooky corners. And a wardrobe. Scary! Even the patterns on the wallpaper seemed to move.
shadows on the wall chasing sleep
Was I lonely – I don’t think so. Or did I ‘learn to be lonely’ as in the Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song from Phantom of the Opera (covered here beautifully by my daughter Bea … Excuse the plug!)
‘Child of the wilderness’ … The lyrics say it all!
I was, I suppose, a precocious child. I could read and spell, even quite difficult words like ‘intelligence’, before starting school, but struggled with writing and arithmetic.
I hated school! I didn’t fit. Had few friends. And thought and behaved differently. I spent an awful lot of time reading or staring out the window …
Hidden
I turned the page.
[…] “‘I have amazing news for you – and indeed for every bird-lover in the country,’”he whispered. […]
It was my first day at Junior (Primary) school and I had picked a book to read, from the library shelves.
“Bennett! What are you doing ?”
“Reading, Miss” (I hadn’t heard the Headmistress come into class). “We were told to”, Miss.
“What have I been talking about?”
“Dunno, Miss.”
“Come here!” (six raps on the knuckles for not paying attention and six more for answering back). “Write out, in your best handwriting, ‘I must not read in class’. Twelve times!”
Did she know that my writing was awful. I could read, and spell almost anything, but write – I couldn’t write for toffee.
I returned to my desk and stared out the window; a Green Woodpecker flew up into the trees bordering the grounds of the old Rectory. Overgrown and unkempt – a place of mystery and adventure. …
I sneaked a look at the next page.
[…] “‘As I suspected, the birds you saw and which I have been watching for fifteen minutes are Bee-eater.’”[…]
The bell rang …
morning assembly sparrows chattering in the playground
As told to my son many many years later. He ‘got it’ straight away! Made me think.
But it was this book ‘The Fourth Key’ by Malcolm Saville that inspired and fed my passion for watching birds … that was to last a lifetime.
A serialisation of my semi-autobiographical ebook of haiku. A sort of poetic memoir. A story of “inspirations illustrated with wonderful poems and writings” (Andrea Stephenson).
I’ve quoted Richard Jefferies rather a lot. He and I share an affinity with nature and the countryside, with my haiku often ‘found’ or intuited from his prose, an effective foil to his ‘gushing’ (R.H.Blyth) writing.
Oh and it also has the odd bit of music and occasional birdsong too.
The front cover and coloured illustrations are from woodblock prints by Ohara Koson (Ohara Hōson, Ohara Shōson Kanazawa 1877 – Tokyo 1945) who was a Japanese painter and woodblock print designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at the forefront of shinsaku–hanga and shin–hanga art movements.
Koson is known for his depictions of birds and animals, which were often set in naturalistic landscapes. His prints capture the essence of his subjects with delicate lines and intricate details. Koson was influenced by the work of the Kacho-ga artist Imao Keinen, and his prints reflect a similar interest in the beauty and intricacy of the natural world.
The black and white landscape photos were prepared by Miss Bertha Newcome and published in “Richard Jefferies A Study” by H S Salt 1883.
The birdsong recordings are used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs4.0 license. These and many more can be found at – Xeno-Canto – a website dedicated to sharing bird sounds from all over the world.
All rights reserved. This ebook, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Any errors, omissions or inaccuracies, grammatical or otherwise, are entirely my own.
[Suddenly] “… a lark starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of winter, at least assures us that summer will certainly return.“ . . .
distant bells across the fields skylark song
(Out of Doors in February – Richard Jefferies 1882)
So how come I started writing haiku – I wasn’t a poet and didn’t read poetry. Not since school anyway although the line ‘we have no time to stand and stare’ (‘Leisure’ W.H. Davies), had somehow stuck with me. I wasn’t a writer either. But I loved reading. And had done from a very young age. Mum had lots of books. I discovered the North Pole, messed about on the river, travelled to the centre of the earth, followed Alice down the rabbit hole and walked with Richard Jefferies up Liddington Hill – countless times …
My Creative Muse – Richard Jefferies 1848-1887
It was quite by accident. I had picked up a book (more about that later) by Colin Blundell ’Something Beyond the Stars’ (Found Haiku from the Notebooks of Richard Jefferies). I didn’t know Colin from Adam (although I was to correspond with him subsequently – Colin that is).
Sadly I never got to meet him, but we shared a passion for the nature writing of Richard Jefferies. Colin believed that within Jefferies’ eloquent prose there were zen-like moments of ‘suchness’ which could be ‘teased out’ or ‘found’ and expressed as haiku. Moments Jefferies himself said he sometimes ‘lacked the words’ [Sic] to express.
Richard Jefferies, widely considered the father of English nature writing, was perhaps the most brilliant observer of nature of the 19th century. I’d read a lot of his work but this was something new, different and exciting. I didn’t think anyone had looked at his life in this way before. Indeed, as Colin argues “his whole philosophy could be said to be built upon such haiku-moments.” I would go further and say that much of his writing is prose written in the manner of haiku. Now there’s a thought!
So what better than to find my own haiku in his writing …
Here’s a favourite passage of mine from ‘The Story of my Heart’ (1883) – his spiritual autobiography.
“There were grass-grown tumuli on the hills to which of old I used to walk, sit down at the foot of one of them, and think. Some warrior had been interred there in the ante-historic times. The sun of the summer morning shone on the dome of sward, and the air came softly up from the wheat below, the tips of the grasses swayed as it passed sighing faintly, it ceased, and the bees hummed by to the thyme and heathbells.” . . .
summer grasses dreaming the dreams of warriors
Similar, perhaps too similar, to Bashō’s ’Summer Grasses’, my intuited haiku (monoku) is meant not as an allusion, though it is that, albeit a weak (in content) one, but more an example of how Jefferies approached what he saw in the world around him with a sensibility akin to Bashō.
Summer grass the only remains of soldiers’ dreams
(translated by Jane Reichhold)
Here’s another favourite …
“‘There’s the cuckoo!’ Everyone looked up and listened as the notes came indoors from the copse by the garden. He had returned to the same spot for the fourth time. The tallest birch-tree—it is as tall as an elm—stands close to the hedge, about three parts of the way up it, and it is just round there that the cuckoo generally sings. From the garden gate it is only a hundred yards to this tree, walking beside the hedge which extends all the way, so that the very first time the cuckoocalls upon his arrival he is certain to be heard. His voice travels that little distance with ease, and can be heard in every room.”
The Hills and the Vale (1909)
sunshine filling every room the cuckoo’s call
There is a spirituality in his writing suggestive of an ‘animist’ approach to nature. He clearly felt that all things—plants, animals, stones, even weather—are sentient and alive. And once described the downs as being ‘alive with the dead’.
“… there was magic in everything, in the blades of grass and the stars, the sun and the stones upon the ground”
(Bevis, 1882)
All of which of course lends itself to haiku which too has its roots in animism.
Coate Farm – Richard Jefferies’ Birthplace
I’ve always felt at one with nature (and the wider Universe). The warrior buried in the mound is as real to me now as it was to Richard Jefferies then. And so my haiku storey begins. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps it all really started way back in childhood all those years ago.
[…] “‘I have amazing news for you – and indeed for every bird-lover in the country,’”he whispered. […]
found again
It was my first day at Junior (Primary) school and I had picked a book to read, from the library shelves.
“Bennett! What are you doing ?”
“Reading, Miss” (I hadn’t heard the Headmistress come into class). “We were told to”, Miss.
“What have I been talking about?”
“Dunno, Miss.”
“Come here!” (six raps on the knuckles for not paying attention and six more for answering back). “Write out, in your best handwriting, ‘I must not read in class’. Twelve times!”
Did she know that my writing was awful. I could read, and spell almost anything, but write – I couldn’t write for toffee.
She kept the book.
I returned to my desk and stared out the window; a Green Woodpecker flew up into the trees bordering the grounds of the old Rectory. Overgrown and unkempt – a place of mystery and adventure. …
a secret garden
We turned the page.
[…] “‘As I suspected, the birds you saw and which I have been watching for fifteen minutes are Bee-eater.’”[…]
My son finally asleep, I stared out the window towards the blue line of distant hills. Thoughtfully, I put the book back on his bedroom shelves.
my childhood
Originally Published in the Blo͞o Outlier Journal Issue #2 Summer 2021
